I think the government should add taxes to bring the price up to around $5.00 a gallon, that's the single biggest step they could take to reduce congestion and emissions while at the same time fund needed repairs to a national highway infrastructure that was built in the 50's and 60's.

All this nonesense about biodiesel and corn oil-electric cars is a smoke screen to let Detroit keep from facing reality that the jig is up on giant enviromental sh*t-bombs like Excursions and Hummers.

We don't need to endlessly reinvent the wheel with expensive and ultimately impractical technology when there is a raft of cars available now that get milage up in the 40's and 50's with gas or diesel engines, all we have to do is import them untill the big three get off their dead ass's and start building them. While I hate to agree with Kay-Pee I think he's right in one respect, $3.00 a gallon is the new low, not an arbitrary spike. The reality is the rest of the indusrtialized world has already figured out that small cars are the way to go, coupled with efficient mass transit like trains and bus's into and around cities.

With the way our cities are laid out with people living in suburburban rings around cities instead of in the city itself comuting is a fact of life for a large percent of the working population but that comute can be a lot more efficient than it is now. Twice as many smaller cars can fit on a given space than single occupant large vehicles, they do less damage to the road surfaces than large vehicles and they use half the fuel, by encoureging people to drive smaller vehicles with a tax breaks on their purchase and license fee's for a higher milage vehicle, then increasing the tax on gas we'd have a natural and steady shift towards smaller cars plus the additional tax on fuel, even though we'd be using less fuel overall, would pay for construction and upkeep of our infrastructure.

As motorcyclist this would benefit us in a number of ways, chiefly by increasing our height relitive to the other vehicles on the road. A recent study in MCN showed that taller vehicles are significantly more likely to kill us in a collision because the impact area is on our torso's and internal organs, whereas with a collision with a smaller vehicle the bike and our legs take the hit resulting in a much higher survivability ratio.

Now obviously no wants to get hit at all, but if worse came to worse I'd rather loose a leg than have my guts scrambled, and yes, we all would be safer driving Volvo's but let's put that aside for now and assume we're stupid enough to ride motorcycles and still wish to live a long and happy life. Being taller relitive to the traffic mix also helps us see and be seen and would even make lane splitting easier because the gaps between lanes would be larger.

The answer is already there in front of us with vehicles that are available to 99% of the industrialized world, we don't need a massive technological shift away from internal combustion, we just need to move with the times and realize that the days of driving land yachts are as dead as the dinosaur mush that propels them.

Can't say that I agree with any of the comments on this thread so far (at least not in whole).

I think there's a basic fallacy in comparing the price of gas to the minimum wage, because minimum wage is a pretty arbitrary value set by the government. Even if the legislators tied it to inflation (I'm not sure if they have or not), it wasn't always that way, hence it is not a valid baseline.

- Minimum wage does not set the value of money -

If I'm not mistaken, ksquid's link shows that gas prices are close to their all time high, but not there yet (the blue line is the one adjusted for constant-value dollars). I would also assume that the data points on those lines are the national averages for the given years; your local, yearly high (summer) prices do not make for an apples-to-apples comparison.

I do agree with Sarnali that smaller, lighter cars would make a great solution. Some of the car companies have seen this coming after last summer and are now offering models that have been best sellers in Europe (the Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit). Many people justify bigger cars for safety reasons, but they wouldn't have to worry about getting hit by big SUVs if they weren't driving so many big SUVs! (Heller would appreciate this last point)

However, I can't support fattening up our government any more that it already is. For this country to stay strong we need it to get into shape as badly as many of its citizens do. For me, higher gas tax is out; otherwise I'm on board with Sarnali.

soy bean and canola (rape seed) are the largest sources of biodiesel.. David perhaps you are confusing biodiesel with methanol.. Yes corn is the perdominant source of methanol.. Howerver, biodiesel can be made from ocean algae, corn, soy, sunflower seeds, etc.. That is why folks are saying it is better than methanol.. It also burns cleaner that petro diesel.. David I don't get pissed off usually, sometimes I lose my patience wiith folks who find math and science difficult. However, losing my patience is my fault not theirs.. I lose my temper when folks attack me personally..But again losing my temper is my problem.. "Be angry but don't sin" Jesus said... I know new ideas and thinking are almost always met with resistance and sometimes irrational fear... David I read most of your posts and I respect your views.

In Seattle gas prices in 2006 dollars are averaging $3.16 in in California $3.38 So if we discount to 2005 dollars show in the chart I posted we get $3.065 or rougly 307 cents.. which is higher that the 298.9 cents adjusted price in 1981..California price in 2005 dollars would be 327 cents..much higher than the record price set in 1981

Corn as the source of methanol is a bad idea. The petrol input to create a bushel of corn is staggering. Sorry Iowa, sorry Cargill, let's hope the politicians aren't ..... Never mind what was I thinking.

__________________
3425 miles from Reading, UK
Why their heads on a pike of course. If I thought it would do any good.

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